"Billions of dollars are sent to the State of California for Forrest fires that, with proper Forrest Management, would never happen," Trump tweeted, later editing the post to correct the misspelling of "forest."

"Unless they get their act together, which is unlikely, I have ordered FEMA to send no more money. It is a disgraceful situation in lives & money!" Trump said.

His morning tweet was followed by objections from state's forestry associations.

"How do you describe an individual that would harm people so that he could have his way," said Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.). "The reality is that these funds are necessary for the rebuilding and sustenance of the victims of the fires."

Trump didn't specify which money he wants withheld from FEMA. No order was listed on the White House website. FEMA has continued to pay for disaster recovery despite the government shutdown, agency spokesman Michael Hart said.

Trump's tweet came a day after Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote to the president, asking for more funding to help the state maintain forests on federal land by doubling the federal investment there. Newsom, on his first day on the job, announced his first budget will call for $1 billion for five years for forest management, which includes thinning and prescribed burning.

The governor also signed a pair of executive orders on fires. The first would require state firefighters to craft risk management plans to better cover people who are poor or elderly or have limited mobility. The second seeks to make it easier for the government to contract private-sector technology, and the first project aims to detect fires better.

Doug LaMalfa, who represents Paradise and other areas damaged by the Camp Fire in November, tweeted that FEMA had extended its deadline to register for disaster assistance. His statement came between Trump's first tweet and his second, spell-checked one. And it came a day after the Camp Fire was declared the world's single costliest disaster of 2018. Losses topped $16.5 billion, of which about $4 billion was uninsured.

Many forest groups and lawmakers agree that a more intensive approach makes sense in forests, as climate change, disease and insect infestations make forests more fire-prone. Years of fire suppression also stopped fires in areas where wildfire is a normal part of nature's cycle.

Rich Gordon, president of the California Forestry Association said that about 60 percent of forested land in the state is federally owned, and the state has taken on more management there as federal funding has declined, he said. "I think California is trying to step up."

A bipartisan compromise to boost funding for wildfire suppression passed as part of March's Omnibus bill. U.S. Forest Service and Interior agency costs will be addressed for years to come. The new formula also creates a contingency account with authorizations starting at $2.25 billion in fiscal 2020 as supplemental money for fighting fires.

The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018 maintains budget levels for Interior Department agencies and ups spending authorizations for some agencies, rather than following the Trump administration request for some steep cuts. Agency budgets mostly will go up, not down.

Fire Borrowing

In recent years, funding to fight wildfires has continuously fallen short, causing borrowing of money from other Forest Service and Interior accounts, leading to reduction in other services, less attention to fire prevention and thinning, and other detriments to the public lands management activities. The wildfire funding deal was reached through bicameral negotiations among leaders of both parties.

Commercial forestry interests, environmental activists, and lawmakers from Western states had been pushing at least since 2014 for a wildfire funding fix, while fire seasons have gotten longer and suppression costs have climbed. National Forest Homeowners has supported the effort to find a funding fix.

In the omnibus, the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 will be amended to allow for budget adjustments with a schedule of progressively higher caps for disaster relief funds for fighting wildfires starting in fiscal 2020. Those funds only will be available if annual discretionary appropriations, set to equal the fiscal 2015 level, prove inadequate. Read a summary of how the caps work.

The funding deal was advocated from opposing positions on the political spectrum, such as Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.). These states and others suffered a severe 2017 fire season and some of the highest acreage affected by wildfire for several years running.

Authorizations for supplemental funds will not be a blank check, said Cecilia Clavet, senior policy adviser for forest restoration and fire policy at the Nature Conservancy. Congress still will have to appropriate the money year by year, she said.

Forest Management

The bill lessens some regulatory work and reduces litigation of forest management activities, often contested because of opposition to particular aspects of logging projects. However, fire prevention and resilience projects 3,000 acres or under that follow the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2014 may be categorically excluded from longer environmental impact analysis. Fire and fuel breaks could qualify for those categorical exclusions. Also, projects to remove hazardous trees affecting power lines also may quality for exclusions from environmental analyses if part of an approved program.

The forest management provisions included in the bill were moderate ones that could win compromises, Clavet said. Republicans have been advocating more ambitious changes with bigger categorical exclusions from lengthy NEPA analyses, but those did not make the final cut for the omnibus.

According to news reports, an agreement passed in the Senate yesterday regarding disaster relief could stop fire-borrowing.

The costs for fire-fighting this year already are above $300 million. The Senate added a provision to a disaster spending bill that will allow the Forest Service and Interior Department to cover the costs of wildfires in 2017.

This agreement would prevent the fire-borrowing that goes on with the Forest Service budget every year, where funds for other forest management are diverted to fighting fires. Any amounts that were transferred from other budget areas to fight fires this year will be restored by the bill. While only a temporary solution, the bill helps resolve the issue for this year. Congress continues working on a more permanent fix to fire-borrowing.

"When Oregon's skies are glowing orange at night from wildfires and families are forced to evacuate their homes, our state and the West need money to fight these fires now," Wyden said.

The $15.25 billion measure is aimed to provide support to areas hit by Hurricane Harvey, and early assistance to those facing Hurricane Irma, which is anticipated to make landfall in Florida soon. Also this plan provides a short-term debt limit increase to keep the government funded through the rest of 2017. It is scheduled to be voted on today in the House.

Wyden and Merkley plan to continue efforts on a fire budgeting solution, which has been stalled by debates over management of national forests. To end fire-borrowing, the senators support an approach that funds wildfires the way other disasters are funded and provides faster approval for fuels reduction and thinking projects to deter future fires.

]]>Current NewsFri, 8 Sep 2017 15:52:39 GMTTree Species May Need Help in Northern Stateshttps://www.nationalforesthomeowners.org/news/335431/
https://www.nationalforesthomeowners.org/news/335431/Climate Impact in Minnesota and Wisconsin Affects Tree Species

Trees 'cannot walk,' so people might have to move them

Published: Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Forests in Minnesota and Wisconsin will have a hard time adapting to shifting climate patterns, a study has found.

The Woods Hole Research Center found that balsam fir, quaking aspen and red spruce are particularly vulnerable to climate change. These trees won't be able to survive warming conditions without a helping hand.

"Trees, after all, cannot walk. They must disperse seeds that, in turn, establish, grow and reproduce. The pace of climate change threatens to rapidly overtake this migration, and landscapes fragmented by humans present even more challenges," said Brendan Rogers, lead author of the study.

The study hopes to resolve the debate of whether human intervention is required to save vulnerable tree species in national parks ? a policy that the National Park Service has avoided so far. Lee Frelich, director at the Center for Forest Ecology at the University of Minnesota, said that changing this policy would be vital for areas like the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness as temperatures increase.

"We know white pines can handle warmer temperatures because we know they can thrive in southeastern Minnesota. But will we need to move those southern ecotypes north? Or will the Boundary Waters white pines be able to adapt?" he said (John Myers, Pioneer Press, March 11).

Based on reports yesterday, Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R) stated that pressures from sportsman groups and others have urged him to pull his legislation that would have disposed of 3.3 million acres of federal lands, introduced last week. He is withdrawing the bill.

House Bill 621 authorized sale of public lands in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and Wyoming as well as Utah ? where the Congressman is from. These public lands were listed as appropriate for sale or exchange in a 1997 Interior Department report and they were part of a larger plan to benefit Everglades restoration.

" I hear you and HR 621 dies tomorrow," said Chaffetz in response to pressure. He identified himself as a "proud gun owner" and hunter.

Pressure opposing the bill included a social media campaign led by Backcountry Hunters & Anglers to target his bill. Aaron Kindle, Western sportsmen's campaign manager for the National Wildlife Federation, likewise credited the flood of calls and emails to Chaffetz's office for the bill's demise.

Kindle said, "We hope this decision signals that Rep. Chaffetz and his congressional colleagues are starting to understand how important these lands are to Americans and that they'll cease their efforts to seize them from the public trust."

Kindle went on to suggest that House lawmakers should reverse language included in this session's rules package that allows the House to disregard the cost of a land transfer, as determined by the Congressional Budget Office. The CBO's estimate comes from the loss of revenue from activities like drilling, logging and grazing.

A second bill,H.R. 622, introduced by Chaffetz, has not been withdrawn. This bill seeks to eliminate hundreds of law enforcement positions at the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service in favor of allowing local police to monitor public lands (E&E Daily, Jan. 25).

Bipartisan legislation encouraging the use of volunteers to maintain trails passed the Senate today and is awaiting President Obama's signature.

Conservation and recreation groups praised the legislation, called the "National Forest System Trails Stewardship Act" (H.R. 845). It passed the Senate by unanimous consent.

Chief sponsors of the identical legislation in the House and Senate were Reps. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) and Tim Walz (D-Minn.) and Sens. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) and Michael Bennet (D-Colo.).

The legislation calls for a national strategy on increasing the involvement of volunteers and nongovernmental organizations in trail maintenance, while addressing liability concerns. The legislation specifically seeks to involve fire crews in off-season maintenance, by requiring a study on the use of such crews for trail work.

The Forest Service maintains about one-quarter of the 158,000 miles of agency-owned trails that offer hiking, horseback riding and other activities, Bennet's office reported.

Obama is expected to sign the bill, reported the Wilderness Society, which said the measure would provide more opportunities for people to experience the outdoors.

The coming wildfire season will be especially severe in California and the Southwest, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said today, as the Department of Agriculture continues to press Congress to change the way it pays for firefighting.

"We're very concerned about California," Vilsack said. The state has an estimated 40 million dead trees -- 29 million of which died just last year -- to serve as potential fuel for forest fires, he said on a conference call with reporters.

If conditions remain dry in California, Vilsack said, "you're looking at a very serious situation."

Even if rainfall were to return to normal in California, the state would need more than a year to recover from a drought that has lasted five years, said Tom Tidwell, chief of the Forest Service, who joined Vilsack on the call.

The forecast comes as USDA officials coordinate efforts for the fire season. Tidwell and Vilsack met with regional foresters today to discuss plans for the season, USDA said.

Anticipating a busy fire season, the Forest Service has transferred $30 million to treating high-risk areas, Vilsack said. The Forest Service and the Interior Department spent about $2.6 billion last year on firefighting, he said.

USDA said it has 10,000 firefighters available, as well as 900 fire engines, 300 helicopters and 21 air tankers.

Officials blame climate change for the growing wildfire problem. The fire season is now 78 days longer than it was in 1970, and the number of acres burned annually has doubled since 1980.

In addition, Vilsack said, the number of large fires has grown sharply since 1970.

The Forest Service spent 52 percent of its budget on fires last year, and appears headed toward eventually spending two-thirds on fires, Vilsack said. More Forest Service employees work on fires than on forest management that could prevent them, he said.

Vilsack said he continues to urge Congress to establish a disaster funding account for firefighting, to end the department's practice of borrowing from other parts of the budget.

Congressional Republicans grilled Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell yesterday on his agency's approach to forest management, admonishing him for not doing more to thin out the woods through timber sales.

Republicans on the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Federal Lands took turns clashing with Tidwell, who said market conditions and the Forest Service's growing emphasis on fire suppression limit its ability to meet lawmakers' demands.

National forests are "choked and dying" because of overgrowth, leading to greater risk of catastrophic fires, said subcommittee Chairman Tom McClintock (R-Calif.).

Although the Obama administration has asked Congress for more funding -- and a new funding mechanism -- for fighting wildland fires, officials aren't doing enough to address underlying causes of fires, McClintock said.

To him and other panel Republicans, a sharp increase in logging would serve two functions: promoting healthier forests that aren't as prone to out-of-control fires, and generating revenue for the government. The Forest Service should be generating around $300 per year, per acre, on timber sales, he said, although Tidwell said he doesn't believe market conditions support much expansion.

In one of its most lucrative years, 1989, the Forest Service harvested 12 billion board feet of timber worth $1.3 billion at a price of $110 per thousand board feet, the agency said.

By 2015, the agency harvested 2.5 billion board feet worth $162 million at a price of $63.96 per thousand board feet, the subcommittee's Republican staff said in a memo to lawmakers.

With limited budgets, Tidwell said, the agency has had to boost fire suppression at the cost of maintaining forests and keeping access roads open. A new funding regime that eliminates the need for transfers from other accounts -- as the administration proposed -- would help, he said.

"It's eroded the agency's ability to do the work," Tidwell said. "There's no question that if we had more capacity, we'd be able to get more work done."

Yesterday's hearing illustrated fundamental disagreement over the direction of the Forest Service, which has moved farther away from timber production as it devotes more people and money to wildfire suppression. To McClintock and other Republican lawmakers, a move back toward timber production -- and thinning out the forest -- would be more productive in the long term toward minimizing damaging fires.

The administration requested $874 million for fire suppression in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, which is designed to cover 70 percent of anticipated suppression costs. The rest would be covered using funds outside the Forest Service's budget. Congress provided the agency $811 million this fiscal year for suppression, with an additional $823 million in emergency suppression funding.

Fire suppression takes about half the Forest Service budget, and officials project the share will grow to 67 percent by 2025, Tidwell said.

"That's how dire this situation is," Tidwell said. He called the Forest Service's future "very bleak."

While firefighting tugs at the agency's budget in Western states, lawsuits and other controversies are to blame for the decline of logging on Forest Service land in Alaska, Tidwell said in an exchange with Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska).

Forest Service timber sales have tumbled, "killing southeast Alaska," Young said. "We don't really like the Forest Service very much in Alaska."

The long-standing debate over funding the growing cost of battling wildfires across the West will likely take center stage this week as a House Appropriations panel holds its first hearing on the Forest Service's proposed $4.9 billion fiscal 2017 budget.

The president's request calls for a new "off budget" $864 million fire suppression cap adjustment that would kick in once the government exhausts discretionary money.

Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell will likely make wildfire cost reform a centerpiece of his testimony during Wednesday's hearing of the House Appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the Interior Department and environmental issues.

The Forest Service says fire suppression accounts for a record 52 percent of its annual budget, compared with 16 percent in 1995. The agency has never spent so much on fire in its 110-year history.

The agency routinely blows through budgeted amounts for wildfire suppression and has dipped into money intended for other programs in seven of the last 14 years -- a practice called "fire borrowing."

"Dollars taken from nonfire programs for fire suppression interrupt projects and activities that pre-emptively reduce the risk of catastrophic fires, restore forest health, protect communities, and deliver a multitude of other values," the agency said in its budget request.

Tidwell and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack have called on Congress to adopt legislation called the "Wildfire Disaster Funding Act" to allow USDA and the Interior Department to use disaster funding outside the agencies' discretionary budgets to fight wildfires each year.

Vilsack and other supporters of the idea fought unsuccessfully to have the legislation, or elements of it, included in the fiscal 2016 omnibus spending package (E&E Daily, Dec. 16, 2015). Instead, the escalating costs of wildfire suppression continue to be a major concern for the Forest Service.

Last year's devastating wildfire season, in which a record-setting 10.1 million acres burned nationwide, highlighted the problem, according to USDA, which described 2015 as the most expensive wildfire season in its history (Greenwire, Jan. 7).

The 10 million acres burned last year underscores how wildfires are becoming larger, more intense and more expensive to extinguish, particularly in the West, where drought conditions and overgrown forests have helped greatly expand the wildfire season, agency leaders say.

The problem was so bad during the peak of the wildfire season last August that the Forest Service said it spent $243 million on wildfire suppression during a single week.

The Forest Service in its budget request referred to "uncharacteristically severe wildfires" as a major threat to the nation's "ability to protect its forest and grassland resources."

Along those lines, the administration's budget blueprint requested $384 million for hazardous fuels treatments, $9.1 million above enacted levels.

Other items in the Forest Service's request that are likely to come up during this week's discussion include a proposal to boost acquisitions under the Land and Water Conservation Fund -- to $128 million from $63 million in current funding.

The budget also asked Congress to raise the authorized funding level for the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program from $40 million to $80 million annually.

However, the administration only requested that lawmakers set aside $40 million for the program in 2017, a $20 million drop from last year's request and level with current funding.

Schedule: The hearing is Wednesday, Feb. 24, at 9:30 a.m. in B-308 Rayburn.

Policymakers must prepare for larger blazes -- report

Last year's record wildfire season is a harbinger of things to come as the climate warms, necessitating that policymakers and scientists work closely together to adopt strategies to manage and control blazes, according to a report from a group of leading wildfire experts.

Ten scientists mostly from universities across the West have written ajoint paper, distributed by the research group Headwaters Economics, touching on seven major issues regarding wildfires that could help better direct resources where they can have the most impact.

Ray Rasker, Headwaters' executive director, is one of the report's authors.

For example, while most of the costs and risks of fighting wildfires are to protect communities and homes in the path of a blaze, "most fire policy and management to date has focused on taming fire risk in relatively undeveloped landscapes," according to the nine-page paper, "Insights From Wildfire Science: A Resource for Fire Policy Discussions."

Instead, more money and effort should go toward funding federal programs that help homeowners protect their properties by using "fire-resistant" landscaping and yard materials, the report says.

"Social science indicates stronger incentives for builders and local governments will create more fire defensible developments that would ultimately reduce costs to taxpayers," it says.

The report notes that San Diego has adopted "strict brush management regulations," and the Flagstaff, Ariz., fire department has a development code designed to protect vulnerable homes in the wildland-urban interface.

The goal of the latest paper is to "contribute useful information that helps promote resilient communities and landscapes facing more fire in years to come," said Tania Schoennagel, a research scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the lead author of the report.

"We live in a fire environment. Large fires have happened; more will burn in the future," said Penelope Morgan, a fire ecologist at the University of Idaho and one of the paper's authors. "Fostering resilience of landscapes and communities facing more fire and smoke depends on effective, informed conversations. Science can help inform effective fire management and policy."

The report comes on the heels of a devastating 2015 wildfire season.

A record-setting 10.1 million acres burned nationwide last year, according to the Department of Agriculture, underscoring how wildfires are becoming larger, more intense and more expensive to extinguish, particularly in the West, where drought conditions and overgrown forests have helped to greatly expand the wildfire season (Greenwire, Jan. 7).

The Department of Agriculture, which released the wildfire numbers earlier this month, said it spent a record $2.6 billion last year on fire suppression costs alone, forcing the Forest Service to once again siphon money away from other agency programs, including many forest health and restoration projects that could help reduce the risks and severity of wildfires.

The size and number of fires are likely to increase, driven by droughtlike conditions and a warming climate, the report says.

"Weather and climate are the primary determinants of the total acreage burned in nearly all western forests, woodlands and shrublands," according to the report. "As the climate continues to warm, our knowledge of the past tells us that more area will burn across the West. Because climate's influence on wildfire is so strong, we are facing an inevitable trend of increasing annual area burned, and will need to learn how to adapt to more wildfire."

The question becomes, how best to adapt to this new reality?

More logging in overgrown forests may not be the answer, the report says.

The enormous ongoing effort to reduce fuel loads on federal lands by "thinning" trees or controlled burns has value, but is expensive and can only do so much to reduce wildfire risks because these programs cannot address private lands.

"We will never be able to treat enough land to alter the trend of increasing acreage burned, but prioritizing federal fuel treatments around communities and creating better mechanisms for reducing fuels on private land can help reduce home loss and better protect communities," the report says.

Each region and district is undertaking this 4 year process. The process involves involves three distinct phases: 1) assessment of the current conditions and trends of forest resources and multiple uses, 2) development of a revised plan, and 3) monitoring and implementation of the final approved plan. Contact your district about the status of their planning process and get involved. Your participation can keep our recreation residence program healthy and your relationship with the forest positive and productive.]]>Current NewsFri, 16 Oct 2015 14:51:09 GMTCourt Stays Implementation of New EPA Rule Over US Waters https://www.nationalforesthomeowners.org/news/255026/
https://www.nationalforesthomeowners.org/news/255026/Current NewsMon, 12 Oct 2015 17:32:08 GMTRep. Hastings Press Releasehttps://www.nationalforesthomeowners.org/news/206988/
https://www.nationalforesthomeowners.org/news/206988/Please read the press release from Rep. Doc Hastings, Chairman of the House Natural Resource Committee]]>Current NewsSat, 13 Dec 2014 05:23:27 GMTUS House Acts to keep Cabin Fees Fair & Affordablehttps://www.nationalforesthomeowners.org/news/206092/
https://www.nationalforesthomeowners.org/news/206092/Click here to view the article published by the Sierra Sun Times.]]>ArchivesMon, 8 Dec 2014 20:01:28 GMTA little cabin humorhttps://www.nationalforesthomeowners.org/news/162296/
https://www.nationalforesthomeowners.org/news/162296/Click here for a very entertaining music video about cabin life. Cabin owners have a lot of serious issues to worry about, but in the spirit of the cabin program we should keep things lighthearted and can't forget our sense of humor! Enjoy.]]>ArchivesTue, 25 Feb 2014 19:06:08 GMT